White Dog Fell from the Sky

8



Lawrence returned home from Swaneng the following weekend. When he stepped from the truck, he kissed Alice’s cheek, not her mouth. It was impossible for her to know whether the coolness between them these days was temporary or permanent. Since coming to Botswana, certainties eluded her.

Daphne had recently gone into heat. Lying on the cool cement of the kitchen floor, she panted happily, leaking blood. The male dogs were gathering outside the window for the third night in a row. When darkness fell, they would moan and fight and howl while the Siren paced restlessly.

Lawrence and Alice got ready for bed and climbed in. Their goodnight kiss felt like two blind animals bumping into each other in the dark. A small whimper rose to Alice’s lips, the kind of cry Daphne made to the dogs on the other side of the wall. Lawrence felt miles away, as though his heart were buried down a mine shaft. She wanted to shake him, tell him to wake up. She could almost hate him when he was like this. Outside, she could hear the dogs at it, circling the house, cracking the bones of their desire, woofling and digging, the smaller ones jumping up and down on their hind legs. Alice found it creepy imagining them out there, a gang of sex-starved ruffians under the Southern Cross, vying for young Daphne in her first blooming.

Lawrence had promised Daphne’s former owners, who’d returned to Scotland, that she’d be bred with Peter Ashton’s dog, who had an equally good Alsatian pedigree. Alice would never have made a promise like that. She didn’t trust all that hyperbreeding. She liked mutts. They were better adjusted, and their names were better. Daphne. How pretentious, but that was the name she’d come with. Alice lay in the dark imagining Peter Ashton watching with satisfaction and interest while his dog did it to their dog. Peter Ashton’s dog will never have her, she thought.

Lawrence was awake. He was the only man she’d ever known who could curse without making a sound. She’d once thought of his silent cursing as a kind of sweetness in him, a resignation in the face of forces more powerful than himself, but on this particular night she felt something vicious brewing. He got out of bed, his displeasure subtle and potent, and clattered around in the bathroom filling a metal bucket at the tub.

She slid her feet out of bed and onto the waxed concrete floor. Lawrence looked at her and sloshed toward the door with the bucket. “I didn’t want this damned dog in the first place,” he said.

“You did want her. Stop rewriting history. I was the one who didn’t want her, if you’ll take the trouble to remember.” She followed him out the door and pulled it tight behind her. The garden was dark as a black hat. She thought of the snakes Isaac had warned her against, and Lawrence’s bare feet. Go ahead and bite him, she thought.

Lawrence threw the water and bucket at the largest gang of marauders. A bearded, low-slung dog was standing on a stone making humping motions. In a fury, Lawrence picked up the bearded dog and heaved him, hard, toward the street. The dog yelped through the air and landed.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

“He’s on our property.”

“So why not get a gun and shoot the whole lot then?” She turned and walked back to the house. Minutes later, the gang was back, Daphne sobbing, her nose pressed hard against the screen of the kitchen window. Alice slammed the window shut.